Category: Skyscrapers

US-based firm Kohn Pedersen Fox has envisioned a new district in Tokyothat includes a mile-high skyscraper and infrastructure elements that will protect the city from natural disasters.

Called Next Tokyo 2045, the conceptual plan was featured in the Japanese documentary series Next World and was recently published as a research paper by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitats.

Billed as a megacity adapted to climate change, the district would accommodate half a million residents and would be built on “resilient infrastructure”, said KPF, which has offices in New York, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul and Abu Dhabi.

The scheme was partly inspired by a visionary 1960 masterplan by the Metabolist architect Kenzo Tange, in which a sprawling megastructure spans Tokyo Bay and connects coastal communities.

“Next Tokyo introduces the spirit of Tange’s unrealised plan to the year 2045 by merging it with new engineering technologies and a strategy for high-density vertical development,” said KPF.

“Occupying the bay, but in a far smaller footprint, Next Tokyo explores future urban growth moving upward, rather than outward.”

KPF’s scheme calls for constructing the new 12.5-square-kilometre district on a manmade archipelago, in an area where development is already occurring. It would sit between the coastal communities of Kawasaki and Kisarazu, which are situated on opposing sides of Tokyo Bay.

“Next Tokyo is a linear district strategically situated at a bottleneck in the bay, where multiple phases of land reclamation encroachment along the east side have reduced the waterway passage to only 14 kilometres across,” said the firm.

“By continuing this narrowing progression, Next Tokyo creates a protective border across the bay between the engineered edge of Kawasaki and the naturally protruding shoreline of Kisarazu.”

The development aims to help protect low-elevation areas in the Tokyo metropolis from rising sea levels, earthquakes and typhoons. It would accomplish this through various infrastructural elements, including faceted breakwater bars and operable floodgates.

The plan also features hexagonal rings ranging from 150 to 1,500 metres in width that will lessen the strength of waves while still allowing for the passage of ships.

The smallest rings would support the high-density development, while the medium rings would largely be used for water storage. Rings on the perimeter would support low-density development, including open spaces and pedestrian routes.

The district would contain several high-rise buildings, with the centrepiece being the Sky Mile Tower. Rising over 1,600 metres, the 420-storey skyscraper will contain apartments that can house up to 55,000 people.

Four sky lobbies, spaced every 320 metres, would feature space for retail and public amenities.

The tower’s form consists of multiple sets of three building “legs” that are interconnected to fit within a hexagonal footprint. The number of floors in each set varies from 60 to 90.

“One building leg set overlaps with another set rotated in plan from the first, and the sequence continues moving up the building,” the firm explained.

Revenue generated from the tower and neighbouring buildings would help pay for the municipal infrastructure needed to support the district, said the firm.

Next Tokyo 2045 is intended to serve as a mid-bay transit hub and will run parallel with the existing Aqua Line, which consists of a bridge and tunnel combination.

The new district would contain tunnels for multiple forms of mass transit, including regional rail lines and a new vacuum-tube transportation system similar to Elon Musk’s Hyperloop.

Energy would be generated on-site through photovoltaic solar cells, wind turbines placed within the skyscaper, and the capture of kinetic energy from trains traversing the bay.

The development would also feature urban farming, including the growth of algae to be used as a clean fuel source.

“Industrial-scale agriculture is integrated into the tall tower facades, while more localised community gardens and rooftop farms are introduced as added amenity,”said the firm. “By providing local crop production on a variety of scales, a more secure food distribution system is created.”

KPF emphasised that Next Tokyo 2045 is a hypothetical proposal intended for research purposes.

Other ambitious conceptual schemes of recent years include a utopian floating city by WORKac and Ant Farm, and Vincent Callebaut’s proposal for underwater “oceanscrapers” made from plastic waste.

CapitaGreen is an ultra-modern 40-storey Grade A office tower under construction at the site of the former Market Street Car Park. With a net lettable area of about 700,000 square feet, it is the only CBD office building completing in end-2014 in Singapore’s Downtown Core.

Designed by internationally-acclaimed Toyo Ito, founder of Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, the proposed 40-storey office tower breaks away from conventional office building designs and seeks to reintroduce lush greenery which once covered the city. The architecture is a conceptual expansion of the earth’s surface through the building’s functional and aesthetic features, and would be a dramatic addition to Singapore’s Central Business District skyline upon completion.

The ground floor will feature a sheltered public plaza with art sculptures. The building is clad with an energy-efficient façade comprising double-skin high-performance glass and extensive vertical greenery.

Total net lettable area No. of floors Typical floor area Core location Core to window depth Raised floor to ceiling height Floor to floorRaised floor system No. of car park lots Air-conditioning system Security/maintenance system

The tower with net lettable area of about 700,000 square feet will have office space of floor-to-ceiling height of 3.2 metres, one of the highest in office towers within the CBD. The high floor-to-ceiling height allows for larger windows, enabling more natural lighting to come through and a feeling of spaciousness.

The typical floor plate ranges from 20,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet. Among its unique features will be greenery on every floor, sky terraces on two levels, and a roof garden with a restaurant nestled among the trees for a “sky forest” dining experience.

With the inclusion of numerous state-of-the-art energy-saving features, the completed office tower is designed to achieve the Green Mark Platinum award, the highest accolade in recognising environmentally-friendly buildings from the Building & Construction Authority of Singapore.

CRG Architects has unveiled a proposal to replace slum housing with a pair of skyscrapers comprising stacks of brightly coloured shipping containers.

CRG Architects, which has offices in China and Nigeria, came up with the concept for Container Skyscraper to provide temporary accommodation to replace slum housing in developing countries.

The firm proposes that recycled shipping containers could be stacked to create high-density, cost-effective housing in urban areas – building on a string of inventive proposals for the storage structures from architects and designers, varying from a cross-shaped micro home to a fan-like photography studio.

“There has been a phenomenal shift towards urbanisation, with six out of every 10 people in the world expected to reside in urban areas by 2030.”

“In the absence of effective urban planning, the consequences of this rapid urbanisation will be dramatic,” Gomez added. “In many places around the world, the effects can already be felt.”

Approximately 2,500 containers would be needed to complete the proposed scheme, which could house up to 5,000 people, according to the architects.

The steel containers would be supported by a concrete structure and arranged with their edges overlapping to create two cylindrical towers – one measuring 400 metres in height and the other 200 metres.

“The maximum number of stacking containers one above the other is nine units,” explained Gomez. “It means we need a main structure to support them if we want to have such height.”

By pivoting the containers to create a building with a hollow centre, windows would face away from neighbours and maximise views of the city.

The architects propose that a single unit could be subdivided to provide a studio flat, while up to three containers could be joined to provide a three-bedroom family residence.

Columns of vertically stacked containers in the core of the towers would house an elevator, while empty containers could be used for circulation and vertical gardens as well as medical services, schools, entertainment areas and small markets.

Service pipes and cabling would be threaded through the existing cavities in the base designed for to allow the lifting of the containers with forklift trucks. Gaps between the structures would provide natural ventilation.

The towers feature a red, yellow, green and blue colour scheme. The blocks of colours are intended to represent the hottest and coldest parts of the building, with red containers placed on the south facade, blue on the north, and green and yellow on the east and west faces to show the transition in temperature.

The concept was the runner up in a Mumbai housing competition. CRG Architects is in discussion with humanitarian organisations to investigate its application elsewhere.

The story behind One Central Park starts with two artists who shared the same vision – architect Jean Nouvel, and French artist and botanist Patrick Blanc.

JEAN NOUVEL

The Parisian design star is the winner of architecture’s Nobel Prize – the Pritzker, and a host of other architectural awards. Nouvel creates unforgettable skyscrapers, opera houses, museums and universities that grace city skylines from Manhattan to Tokyo.

Some of his other prestigious projects include: the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, and a limited edition perfume bottle for Yves San Laurent. His innovative work is technically cutting-edge, but conceptually poetic.

One Central Park offered Nouvel and Blanc a canvas of an entirely new scale. Here they built an integrated experience for living in harmony with the natural world.

The public park at the heart of the precinct climbs the side of the floor-to-ceiling glass towers to form a lush 21st century canopy. Using 250 species of Australian flowers and plants, the buds and blooms of the vegetation form a musical composition on the façade. Vines and leafy foliage spring out between floors and provide the perfect frame for Sydney’s skyline.

THE GARDENS

Just like Central Park New York, the 64,00sqm park is a lush tranquil meeting place where you can unwind and relax with friends and family. Wander or cycle through its tranquil groves or simply sit on the lawns for informal al fresco dining. There are also chessboards and an open-air cinema, as well as occasional markets and music festivals.

CANTILEVER AND HELIOSTAT

A hovering cantilever crowns the pinnacle of One Central Park. This contains the tower’s most luxurious penthouses.

Here there are a beguiling assembly of motorised mirrors that capture sunlight, and direct the rays down onto Central Park’s gardens. After dark the structure is a canvas for leading light artist Yann Kersalé’s LED art installation that carves a shimmering firework of movement in the sky. This brings a new starlit architectural shape to the One Central Park design.